The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand.
After completing the specialization, you will be able to:
* Discuss the threats and opportunities that major global trends such as climate change present to businesses;
* Identify ways a company can improve its environmental and social performance;
* Evaluate and compare companies’ sustainability activities and products;
* Develop a business case for implementing sustainability investments;
* Identify key criteria of green businesses and product design;
* Be a change agent in your organization;
* Understand emerging topics in sustainable business, including those in the public policy space.
We're very excited about offering this MOOC specialization and hope it gives you the first step toward learning about and taking action to make the places you work and the products you buy more sustainable.
Sustainable business changes daily with new products, innovations and ideas, so you will be important in keeping the class current. We look forward to learning from you as you take this green journey!
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From the lesson

Financial Analysis for the Business Case

An important aspect of making the business case of change is to show the likely financial impact of the change. Ideally, we will find improvements that increase profits either by saving the company money or by increasing sales. To demonstrate these financial benefits we use a standard tool from financial analysis - Net Present Value analysis (NPV). The idea underlying Net Present Value analysis is that we estimate all the cash inflows and outlays associated with a project, then through a technique called discounting (or computing the present value) we shift all the cash flows into the present so they can be compared. You cannot compare an outlay made to day directly to a cash flow or profit to be received in two or three years. Combining the present value of the cash flows - adding the present value of benefits and subtracting the present value of outlays - gives us the Net Present Value. If the NPV is positive the benefits, adjusted for time, more than offset the costs and the project enhances the value of the company. If the NPV is negative then the monetary benefits do not more than offset the costs. But there may be non-monetary reasons for pursuing the project. This is where we begin to consider the reasons for companies becoming sustainable discussed in Week 2 of this module. The business case includes the financial impact and non-monetary sustainability impacts of the change.